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Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.

CHAPTER IV.


THE LANDLORDS.


Some of us who, like the old man in the story-book, have "gone flying in the face of the Bible," where, according to that old man's dutiful and affectionate son "three score-and-ten's the mark; and no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what's expected of him, has any business to live longer," can bring up strange memories of the days when George the Third was King and his son was Regent. In those days of the Regency the British landlords were glorious upon earth. Their power seemed as firmly established as that of Louis XIV. when the star of his prosperous fortune was in its blazing zenith.[1] They had


  1. In a speech made in the House of Commons, February 26, 1846, Mr. Villiers said, "Up to the present time it has been the boast of the landed proprietors that they have chosen the Ministers of the Country."—Villiers's Free Trade Speeches, vol. ii., p. 332.